Has climate news coverage finally turned a corner?
Editor’s note: Co-founded by The Nation and the Columbia Journalism Review, Covering Climate Now is a collaboration of more than 390 news outlets around the world boasting a combined audience of well over 1 billion people, all dedicated to strengthening news coverage of the climate story. Written by Mark Hertsgaard, the executive director of Covering […]
Highlights from our meeting on climate and the environment
Last week in Boulder, CO, we held a meeting to explore philanthropy’s role in amplifying attention to our global environmental crisis. It was 25 degrees and snowing, but thankfully we didn’t have to walk far from our hotel to eTown, our gracious host for the daylong gathering. The day before, the high temperature reached a […]
Takeaways from the 2019 Journalism Funders Gathering
This post was updated on Nov. 18, 2019. We’ve come a long way since 2001, when a handful of journalism funders got together to compare notes. (We’re looking at you, Jon Funabiki, Vivian Vahlberg and Eric Newton!) Last week, we convened more than 100 funders for our annual gathering to discuss some of the most […]
Including people with disabilities in nonprofits and foundations: Accessibility & equity webinar series
Media Impact Funders has joined 18 philanthropic and nonprofit organizations to present a series of free online diversity, equity, access and inclusion training sessions on the nuts and bolts of how PSOs and foundations and their grantees can include people with disabilities from all backgrounds in their work. The series is hosted by RespectAbility, a […]
WATCH: Supporting diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in journalism
As philanthropy works to support the rebuilding of local news in communities across America in a variety of ways, many funders are also aware of this persistent problem: the lack of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in media organizations. Part of building journalism that serves everyone is ensuring that newsrooms look just as diverse as the […]
“The Game Changers”: Planting the seeds of veganism, one meat-eating dude at a time
Question: Let’s say you’re at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, watching the premiere of a documentary about the power and promise of veganism. “A shocking new documentary that will change the way you look at meat,” reads one of the reviews. Immediately after exiting the film, do you:
Borealis Philanthropy announces new pooled fund to support news organizations & communities of color
Earlier this month, Borealis Philanthropy announced the launch of the Racial Equity in Journalism Fund, a pooled fund to increase the capacity and sustainability of news organizations led by people of color, and to increase civic engagement for communities of color.
Unleashing the power of impact media in education: A Q&A with SIMA Studios
SIMA Studios is a global curator of social impact media with multiple arms: SIMA Awards, which honor high-quality social impact media across the globe; SIMA X, a community film screening and distribution initiative; and SIMA Classroom, an educational program designed to “provide first-class visual storytelling resources to education forums worldwide.” Recently, we chatted with SIMA’s […]
Success beyond scale: Evaluating outcomes that funders really care about
“Scale”—too often this is the bane of a grantee’s or evaluator’s existence when it comes to assessing the social impact of media projects. Why are funders so stuck on this concept, and what other impact models might matter more? As we’ve been reviewing materials we’ve gathered on media impact over the past several years, these […]
WATCH: Building on-ramps to local journalism funding
As funding for nonprofit journalism increases, how do we go from plans to action? How do we make the case for journalism funding to funders who think they can’t make media grants because of how their portfolios are structured, or who don’t know enough about the field to make impactful grants? How do we create […]
A master class for philanthropy in listening
Throughout America today, headlines reveal political division, racial animus, and horrific episodes of gun violence sparked by xenophobic ideology. In mass media and through direct expression in social media dominated by angry political invective, it seems that America has never been more divided.
WATCH: Funding environmental journalism—the landscape, best practices & new projects
This month’s journalism webinar marked the second in a series exploring innovative ways to fund reporting on science, health and the environment. This time, we looked at the field of environmental reporting and heard about successful partnerships and scalable models.